My name is Carlo DeVito, and I am the author of East Coast Wineries: A Complete Guide from Maine to Virginia published by Rutgers University Press. This blog is dedicated to primarily east coast wines and wineries including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. It will also feature products and information from other regions.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Back Mountain Wine Festival This Weekend, July 28 and 29, Luzerne County Fairgrounds (PA)

Doubling event attendance is always a good indication of success, especially when said event hasn’t been around very long. But tripling it? That’s an incredible feat with which Upstate Wine Country’s Back Mountain Wine Festival is familiar.

“We started out four years ago holding it on the go-kart track at the Pikes Creek Raceway,” founder Dan Tompkins said. “But we quickly outgrew that. In our second year we had 400 people, and when we made the change to the Luzerne County Fairgrounds last year we ended up with 1,200. This year we hope to have between 1,500 and 2,000.”

The festival will take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow and bring with it 10 wine-tasting booths. Among them will be Antler Ridge Winery, Bartolai Winery, Blue Mountain Vineyards & Cellars, Capra Collina Vineyard, Ferrone Family Winery, Maiolatesi Wine Cellars and Winterland Winery.

Vintner’s Circle also will be on hand to let people know about what Tompkins calls a novel experience: The company allows visitors to its Dickson City site to make their own wine.

Vendors who specialize in food, crafts, jewelry, apparel and home-and-garden décor will be on hand as well.

“We’ve got plenty of room now,” Tompkins said, “and with the amount of space the Luzerne County Fairgrounds provides, I can see us growing with no problems for the next 10 years.”

Tompkins started Upstate Wine Country, which organizes festivals all over Northeastern Pennsylvania, in 2006 as a way to introduce people to an undiscovered aspect of the region.

“We’re still at the point that the Pennsylvania wine industry is in its infancy, especially for Northeast Pennsylvania,” he said. “People are constantly saying, ‘I didn’t even know there were wineries in Northeast Pennsylvania.’ The cool thing is that once they do learn that, they’re passionate about supporting them.”

Though many of the wineries present are fairly close to greater Wilkes-Barre, some come from farther away.

“The most delightful surprise is that, as the years have gone by in producing festivals, we’ve been drawing from farther and farther away, like Philadelphia, State College and Erie,” Tompkins said. “It really adds to the festival as a whole. This way we can bring local wineries that have become favorites for some to the same place as new wineries, a way to help people discover new things.”

Read More http://timesleader.com/stories/Growing-in-popularity,181815#ixzz21uaurTWi

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About Me

Carlo DeVito is a long time wine lover, and author of books and magazine articles. He is the author of Wineries of the East Coast. He has traveled to wine regions in California, Canada, up and down the east coast, France, Spain and Chile. He has been a published executive for more than 20 years. He shepherded the wine book program of Wine Spectator as well as worked with Kevin Zraly, Oz Clarke, Matt Kramer, Tom Stevenson, Evan Dawson, Greg Moore, Howard Goldberg, and many other wine writers. He has also published Salvatore Calabrese, Jim Meehan, Clay Risen, and Paul Knorr.
Mr. DeVito is the inventor of the mini-kit which has sold more than 100,000,000 copies world wide. He has also publisher such writers as Stephen Hawking, E. O Wilson, Philip Caputo, Gilbert King, James McPherson, John and Mary Gribbin, Thomas Hoving, David Margolick, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., John Edgar Wideman, Stanley Crouch, Dan Rather, Dee Brown, Susie Bright, and Eleanor Clift.
He is also the owner of Hudson-Chatham Winery, co-founder of the Hudson Berkshire Beverage Trail, and president of the Hudson Valley Wine Country.
https://carlodevito.wordpress.com/